Bt8 bn sought to produce teachers over 15 years

THE OFFICE of the Higher Education Commission (Ohec) has been pushing for a plan to provide 58,000 grants over a 15-year period to produce more teachers.

Proposed for implementation between this year and 2029, the plan will require a budget of Bt8.1 billion.

“There will be two types of grants,” said Ohec’s secretary-general, Associate Professor Dr Piniti Ratananukul.

He said the first type offered grants during studies and jobs after graduation. The second provides jobs to those who have graduated from teacher |education programmes.

“For the first type, those who get grants will get a job at the Office of the Basic Education Commission or the Office of the Vocational Education Commission in the areas near their registered home address at the time they were secondary students,” he said.

Piniti said that for the other type, people given grants would be sent to work in areas where schools are short of teachers. He said the plan would offer 3,000 grants in each of the first three years, 4,000 in the fourth year, 5,000 in the fourth fifth year, and 8,000 grants in the sixth to 10th years.

“Throughout the period, the first type of grants will cover just 5,800 students,” Piniti said.

He said the move was in line with the goal of limiting the number of graduates from teacher-education programmes to no more than 25,000 a year. “We need to focus on quality, not quantity,” he said.

In recent years, the number of fresh graduates from teacher-producing institutes ranged between 50,000 and 60,000 annually, raising concerns about quality and oversupply.